


Nobody likes a hungry tiger

by Multifandom_damnation



Category: Titans (TV 2018)
Genre: Animal Transformation, Blood and Gore, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Gen, Heart-to-Heart, Team as Family, Vomiting
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-05-20
Updated: 2019-05-20
Packaged: 2020-03-08 12:47:34
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,456
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18894949
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Multifandom_damnation/pseuds/Multifandom_damnation
Summary: Garfield hadn't meant to kill him, he really didn't, but Rachel was screaming and Kory was hurt and well-The tiger was hungry.





	Nobody likes a hungry tiger

Garfield hadn't meant to kill him, he really didn't, but Rachel was screaming and Kory was hurt and well-  
  
The tiger was hungry.  
  
So now they were driving down the long strip of country road with Rachel in the backseat beside him with a blanket over their legs, Kory sitting behind the wheel and Dick in the passenger seat, arguing about the map.  
  
For the first time in a long time, the tiger that roiled within him was sated and he couldn't feel it's angry claws scratching at him from the inside, but the taste of another man's blood was still hot and heavy on his tongue and he felt something different than the tiger burn his insides.  
  
He felt it bubbling and pushing up his throat as they turned a corner onto another empty dirt road. He scrambled for the door handle but forgot that the car was fucking moving and Rachel pulled him back in a panic. "Pull over," he gasped and when nobody replied, Rachel repeated it louder.  
  
Kory looked at him oddly in the rearview mirror but she pulled over anyway and as soon as the car came to the slowest stop for Garfield's liking, he opened the door and dived out of the car, his legs still tangled in the blankets, and threw up on the side of the road. It tasted like iron and death and his tiger growled low in satisfaction as Garfield sat up after what felt like forever and wiped his mouth. He had expected it to come away with putrid vomit. His hand was red with blood. The ground was slick with it and deep down, Garfield knew where it had come from.  
  
Behind him, Rachel gasped and Kory was swearing as she tried to untangle herself from the seatbelt and Dick was opening the door and sliding down beside Garfield but after a moment of silent horror, Garfield was already standing up on shaking legs and opening his door. "Stop at a hotel." He said quietly and sat against the seat, not bothering to put on his seatbelt. Slowly, reluctantly, the others clambered back into the car and Kory drove towards the nearest hotel on the map. If Dick cared about the lack of seatbelts, he didn't mention it.  
  
The hotel was ramshackle and dingy and normally the sort of thing that Garfield would jokingly complain about but when Kory pulled up the gravel driveway, Garfield had already jumped out the car and run up the path towards the front door. He luckily had half the mind to cover his face with his clean hand as he burst through the door. The lady running the counter flailed as he burst in. "Can we rent a room?" Garfield said. "One with a bathroom."  
  
Pale-faced, the poor lady handed him a key card and he snatched it from her hand and bolted down the hall just as Rachel and the others pushed their way into the room. "He got into a fight," he heard Rachel covering for him. "His nose might be broken and we just really need to wash off the blood so we can be sure..."   
  
Garfield didn't hear the rest of her lie because he was already bolting into the room and slamming the door shut behind him, drowning out the rest of her words and the sounds of outside.  
  
When they found him, he was in the bathroom, hunched over the toilet bowl with one hand slung supportively over the porcine, the other clutched into the bathmat for dear life. There was blood in the sink.  
  
Cautiously, Dick crept over and crouched down beside Garfield who was pale and shaking and probably didn't even know he was there. There was so much blood that Dick, despite his history and choice of occupations, felt a little faint at the sight of it. Enough blood to fill the veins of a living human. Too bad that he wasn't living anymore.  
  
Kory understood Dick's silent command and she grabbed Rachel and steered her out of the bathroom by her shoulders despite her protests.  
  
When the door closed behind them, Dick reached out and placed a hand on Garfield's back. The muscles were bunched up and straining. "I know what you're going to say and I just want you to know that you did nothing wrong."  
  
Garfield sat up slowly and wiped a shaking hand across his face. He glared at Dick from under his eyelashes. "You're wrong," there was blood in his teeth. "I killed him. And this... it's what I deserve. "  
  
Shaking his head, Dick sat down and turned Garfield easily to face him fully. "That's not true and you know it." He waved at the blood coating the toilet. "Do you... do you know what's happening?"  
  
Raising his shoulders in a defeated shrug, Garfield wiped his hand across his forehead to rid his skin of sweat. "You didn't stop the tiger, so the tiger ate him. And now, I'm paying the price. Tigers like blood but I don't."  
  
"But..." Dick trailed off, eyes wide as he looked around at the blood that coated the floor and the toilet and ran down Garfield's chin like a slowly dripping stream. "That's a lot of blood."  
  
Garfield waved his hand vaguely. "I don't fucking know the logistics of it all but I think you can get what's going on. The tiger and I share a body despite us having two separate forms, so I'm guessing this was what once was a person."  
  
"Alright, alright." Dick held his hand up in surrender and Garfield sat back against his hunches. "We can wait it out if you think it'll help. I don't really know what I can do."  
  
Shaking his head, Garfield rested it on his hand, elbow still balanced on the porcelain of the bowl. "I don't know. You can stay if you want but I'm not sure you want to watch me heaving my guts up and puking blood into the toilet."  
  
Clearing his throat, Dick adjusted himself into a more comfortable position on the bathmat and watched as the flow of blood dribbling from his lips down his chin began to cease and his body began to relax, his fist unclenching in the mat. "If you want the company, I'm happy to wait for you." Dick offered.   
  
Gagging, Garfield fell back and collapsed on the cool tiles, wiping his mouth with the back of his hand as he started up at the light with the slowly rotating fan. "Sometimes," he began haltingly. "The tiger in me... it can be hard to control. It's not what you all think. The tiger isn't something I change into and is sitting dormant until I need it, and then I take on its form. There's two of us, and even when I'm me, he's still there somewhere, influencing everything I do. Most times I can keep it at bay. But when the tiger comes out, it takes everything I have to keep it in check, and even then, sometimes it gets away from me." He paused, taking a breath. "Does that make sense?"  
  
After a moment of consideration, Dick nodded. "It does make sense," he said, "I guess we all think about you and the tiger as just you in another form, not necessarily that you're two separate entities." He paused. "Do you share thoughts and feelings?"  
  
"Yeah," Garfield said, throwing a hand across his stomach. "Usually, the tiger's just angry and hungry. Right now it's... satisfied. Sedated. It's sort of a new feeling, I don't usually give him the things he wants because they're rather... violent. But when I'm sitting back and letting the tiger take the lead, I can still try and... control it? Influence it? It isn't happy, but it listens most of the time. I guess this time it just got sick of me."  
  
Dick mused the words over for a moment, carefully watching the emotions displayed on Garfield's face, and something sharp and painful panged in his chest. "You know that it wasn't your fault," Garfield flinched, "Now that we know that you and the tiger aren't one being, we can't possibly hold you accountable for anything it does. Even if that involves murder."  
  
Garfield let out a shuddering breath. "I should have... I should have stopped it in time. I should have made sure nobody got hurt."  
  
"If it weren't for you, Rachel and Kory would be dead," Dick insisted and Garfield fell silent, "If you- or your tiger, whichever- didn't kill that man, then none of us would be here having this conversation right now."  
  
Frowning, Garfield closed his eyes again and reached down to fiddle with the hem of his shirt. "I suppose you're right," he conceded but he still didn't look convinced. "It's just that... I don't know. I just wish it hadn't eaten him. It's really gross. And I hate the blood."  
  
Eying the blood covering the ground and the toilet and most of Garfield's body, Dick pursed his lips and ran a hand through his hair. "Do you know... why the tiger ate him? It normally doesn't go that far, regardless of what kind of day we've had."  
  
From his position on the floor, Garfield shrugged as much as he was able to. "It was hungry," he said simply. "I guess it got sick of being fed nothing but overcooked tofu and raw vegetables."  
  
"Is there a certain reason you don't want to eat meat?" Dick asked curiously, "or is it just your lifestyle choice?"  
  
Garfield shook his head. "It just doesn't feel right eating animals when I can turn into them. It feels wrong to me."  
  
"It's not like tigers are a common delicacy around the world." Dick laughed, running his hands through Garfield's sweat-soaked hair. For the first time since he met him, Dick wondered whether Garfield had died his hair green or if it was just a side effect of the 'cure'. "Is there another reason?"  
  
For a moment there was silence but for the dripping of water from the faucet landing in the basin and the sound of Garfield's sickly breathing. "Cheif says that I can turn into more than just a tiger," Garfield admitted quietly but by the reverence in his voice, Dick wasn't sure if Garfield actually believed it. "And sometimes I can feel it inside me too like there's not enough space, or there are more thoughts than just mine and the tiger's," Garfield said, face flushing a deep red again. 'I don't know. It's stupid. It just... doesn't feel right to eat something that's a part of me."  
  
"That's alright, you don't have to explain yourself to me," Dick said, brushing sticky strands of hair away from Garfield's forehead. "What about you? Do you believe that you can turn into other animals?"  
  
Humming softly, Garfield thought for a moment before he shrugged again. "Maybe not as strongly as the Cheif does. He thinks that there's some kind of mental block I've made for myself and that the only beast within me is a tiger because that's always been my favourite animal." he paused to take a deep breath and when he spoke again, his voice was quiet and hopeful. "I would... like to turn into more animals one day. I'm just not sure it's possible."  
  
Dick just watched him for a little bit, this young boy who had gone through so much despite hardly being considered an adult yet. The animal he had no choice but to be bonded with just ate a person and while the tiger was happy and satisfied, Garfield was forced to bear the consequences. He was just a boy and already he had gone through more any boy his age could ever dream of. "Well," Dick said gently as he removed his hand form Garfield's hair and he frowned at the loss of contact. "How about we get you cleaned up a bit and then we can go back out there and face the rest of the team. How does that sound?"  
  
Reluctantly, Garfield allowed Dick to help him up off the tiles and he flushed the blood down the toilet while Dick cleaned the sink, and after washing his mouth and enduring Dick rubbing water through his hair, Dick turned to him with a sure smile. "You ready to go out there?"  
  
Nervously, Garfield brought a hand to the back of his neck. "Not really," he admitted. 

Chuckling, Dick ruffled Garfield’s hair and pushed him gently through the now opened bathroom door. Stumbling out into the living room, he was met by Kory and Rachel both standing upright and facing him with wide, wild eyes. “Oh my god,” Rachel said in a rush, eyes wide and wild. “Are you ok?”

“Yeah,” Garfield laughed weakly, running his hands through his wet hair. “I’m alright. It’s uh, a little hard to explain.”

Kory looked him up and down like she was trying to find something wrong, a tiny detail that she had missed or a flaw to the lie she assumed he was telling. Ultimately, there was nothing she could say, so she just rolled her eyes and said, “You look like shit.”

“Thanks,” Garfield shot back, trying (and maybe failing), to hide the smile that threatened to crawl its way across his face. “If it makes you feel any better, I’m going to have a nap now so you won’t have to look at me for much longer.”

“Wait,” Rachel demanded, throwing her arm out as he tried to walk away. “What happened? What was with all the blood?”

Garfield was beginning to look a little cornered, so Dick stepped further into the room and placed a hand on his shoulder. “I think,” he said, pushing Garfield towards the bedroom. “We can talk about this tomorrow. Gar can tell us everything in the morning.” Garfield sent him a grateful look over his shoulder as he said goodnight to the others and hid away in one of the bedrooms.

Rachel glanced at Dick out of the corner of her eye. “Is there something you’re not telling us? Is he really ok?”

“I’m not telling you anything,” Dick shrugged, turning away to his own bedroom “That’s up to him to do tomorrow morning. And whether he’s alright or not- I guess he’ll let us know tomorrow as well, but for what it's worth, I think he's much better now then he was when we arrived.”

When the door closed behind him, Dick’s head hit the pillow, and almost immediately he was dreaming of green fur and a ferocious grow and stark red blood and a large beaming smile that spread ear to ear accompanied by a cheeky laugh.


End file.
